Socio-Political Sub-Group Plenary 2nd December 2003 - Transcription
Oral witness: Rt. Revd Michael Scott Joynt
Introductions
Michael Scott Joynt: Thank you. It is good to come and I enjoyed the stimulus of trying to respond to your questions. I’ve been in this post for eight years. I was previously Area Bishop in North Staffordshire, and prior to that I served in the St Albans and Oxford dioceses in ten years of parish ministry; five years on the staff of a theological college, Cuddesdon; six years in work with vocations and continuing education in the St Albans diocese and as a Presidentiary Canon before these last 16 years as a bishop. Obviously I’m an interested party in the sense that there aren’t too many more, in one sense, by post, establishment figures than the Bishop of Winchester, in terms of the crown and Wessex. My post was 200 years old when my predecessor was alongside King Alfred. This engagement goes back a long way and I think it’s worth making that kind of point because I’m obviously deeply involved in many of the issues and therefore the question of being sufficiently outside them to look into them is a constant matter.
As I reread this morning what I wrote to you months ago, I noted four or five things I was particularly intrigued by as I reread them. One was on the second page – I’m sorry I didn’t number the pages - in response to your question five. The pressing question is that of the acceptance of religion in British governmental and public life: will this continue to diminish or will it not? And the rest of the paragraph seems to me six months on, still more pressing. The second thing that struck me was my comment at the top of the following page, that there is an argument to be had for the insights and methodology of Jewish Christian ethics and for apology, and this isn’t a moment to turn tail. In a whole series of ways, I think even more strongly that that’s the case now than I did six months ago. On the following page, number three under Theological, this question of a state church. I was again discussing some of these issues the other day with my colleague, the Bishop of London, whom a number of you will know, and was again reminded at how regularly he notes that in his judgement the Church of England is among the least established churches in Europe. Not only financially, but particularly that way, but in a number of other respects as well. The last two things I wanted to note - one of them is at the foot of that page. It’s still my conviction that a secular state, should we be led down that road, would very likely be a state less tolerant of religious faith, and of the convictions and sensitivities of believers, and probably of secular doctrines other than those of its management, than would our present arrangements. And that’s a serious matter for Christians. And the last thing I think is at top of following page – I think I’d now put some of that more sharply. I noticed that John Wilkins in The Tablet a few weeks ago said something like, and I haven’t got the exact quotation, but that increasingly it feels as if Christians are the people who don’t have the right to put their convictions in the public arena. And that’s my experience, watching the Parliamentary process and other aspects of public life and of course the way that great swathes of our Press, particularly the broadsheet press, tend to behave.
Derek Tidball: It sounds, if I may lead off, as if you’re somewhat pessimistic about the direction in which we have been going in, and perhaps continue to go in, in the future, with Christianity being marginalised. You comment on Britain being a secular society, at least in its public doctrine – that’s presumably because there’s an attempt to make an inclusive agenda which means if it’s going to be inclusive, it has to exclude any exclusive positions - yet there you are with other bishops, sitting in the House of Lords. Are you able to reflect on your experience as a bishop in the Lords with us? The sort of reception you get; whether you feel your voice is heard; whether you can only speak if you translate a Christian values position into secular jargon.
Michael Scott-Joynt: I think it depends very much on, this is to generalise extremely, but whether we are broadly running with or against the political correctness of the age. If we’re engaged, as I shall be tomorrow in the Foreign Affairs debate, because of particular experience and contacts, if we’re engaged talking about the Congo and Northern Uganda and the arms trade, then we’re swimming with the flow. If we’re engaged on Section 28 or the age of consent or undoubtedly as we shall be through the winter in civil partnerships and the gender recognition bill, about both of which I’ve had many a conversation with Don Horrocks, then we’re against the tide and our presence is I think by many really resisted. And I do think we’re in the position which - I think Christians ought to expect to be marginalised - but we’ve on the whole in this country, certainly in the Church of England, not been trained and formed for that position. And for me certainly, my own learning for that has been, for the beginnings of that which I have seen the past few years, has been really through the privilege of relationships with elements of the Anglican communion in many of the more pressured parts of the world who have led me back into reading scripture in ways which are much more preparing for that.
Ram Gidoomal: You said in your closing comments Christians don’t have a right increasingly to be heard. Why should they have a right is the question that arises in my mind - what gives them the right to be heard in the public arena today?
Michael Scott-Joynt: I think from point of view of the public arena in general, I should want to argue that we have as much right as anybody and that includes as much right as people of other faiths and those from a number of secular philosophies. Of course, secular philosophies are often not recognised as such – they are today recognised as the norm from which everything else is some kind of weird declination. So I think simply on human rights grounds we have as much right to be heard as anybody. I think then that there’s a fair argument that, unless you think as is occasionally suggested, that history started in 1980, then the whole make up of this society would suggest, a particular sense, that this society has some responsibility to listen to Christians if it’s going to understand itself and its formation. And then from our own inner Christian point of view, if we believe that our fundamental convictions about the character of the world as created and ways of life as God-given, and the claims of Christ upon the world are true, then it’s our business to find ways of making ourselves heard.
Ram Gidoomal: Two points if I may. One is, just to offer a reflection back from an experience I had with the BBC when after a long effort they gave me the right to appear on Any Questions. When I asked them why, they said that they couldn’t argue with 100,000 votes which made me think, that my background, anything else, has no relevance here, even my competence, dare I add it, because it is a question of the number of votes. That’s one point – I would be interested in your reflection. The other one is the reference to other faiths. I’d be interested from your position as Bishop of Winchester in the context you’ve described it – how the Church relates with other faiths. Who are these other faiths, community leaders, how are they defined, how has one established that they have legitimacy and a basis to be the people. To give you an example to make the point and to be provocative, the Ahmadiyya sect as they are called in the Islamic world, who are absolutely not recognised anywhere in Islam, have got this brilliant mosque in Morden and are recognised by us. So again, there’s a whole issue here within inter-faith relations.
Michael Scott-Joynt: That’s one issue, as you know as well as I do, extremely complicated and one of the reasons I guess why the government’s limping programme for the reform of the Lords has got to limp still more at the particular point of the representation of non Christian faith communities is sheer difficulty of deciding who on earth could represent anybody because clearly the ecumenical questions within Islam and Judaism, certainly within those two, are infinitely more complicated and infinitely less developed I guess then they are within the Christian faith. At the local level, it is still difficult – in my diocese, the significant area is Southampton where there is a significant minority of ethnic community, largely of Asian-origin people, though a small Afro-Caribbean population. But there are five or six mosques and two or three Gurdwaras and a Hindu temple. And it’s not easy whether for Southampton Unitary Authority or for the churches to discern who are the people to talk with. There is a Council of Mosques and, like in many other parts of the country in the weeks before the occupation of Iraq, the Roman Catholic Bishop who is currently chairman of the Churches Together and I did have a meeting with the leadership of the Council of Mosques and it was possible to determine by our clergy on the ground and the ecumenical set-up on the ground with whom we should meet. But nationally that’s much more complicated.
Ram Gigoomal: The first point which I made about the 100,000 votes, can I add another point that the BBC made to me. I went to them with a letter signed by a large number of bishops and their comment to me – and I said it to them in the public domain in a similar meeting just two weeks ago and I repeated the comment they made to me – but nobody listens to Bishops. So they ignored entirely the letter I gave them as non-relevant.
Michael Scott-Joynt: Well there’s a challenge for all of us. We’ve never as our churches mobilised our people electorally, either on party matters or even really, apart from Roman Catholics on certain matters, on a range of ethical issues on a whole lot of fronts. We’re faced with questions about whether we can sit back any longer and not organise. The EA is perhaps setting some fashions in its various campaigns and commissions – that’s one of the intriguing things about reading your material and coming into the building.
Martyn Eden: Bishop, can I explore a point that you’ve made that is really quite interesting because it differs from what most of the other witnesses have given us. On the issue of the extent to which Britain is a secular society, they’ve tended to divide either yes it is becoming increasingly secular, which is usually made by academic sociologists, or alternatively no it’s not but it’s becoming increasingly pluralistic. But you come out with something much more complex which strikes me as fits my own experience of it. You’re saying it’s becoming secular in public doctrine – the government, the legislative assembly etc. Parliament etc. does seem to be influenced by a form of political correctness which reflects increasing levels of secularism. It if difficult to get a Christian voice on many of the debates – and yet not impossible because there are still a significant group of Christians in both houses. But it’s hard and I suffered with you as I read Hansard through some of the debates in which you spoke recently. And at the same time in society, there is an increasing level of pluralism. How has this come about? What’s driving it? How do you explain this phenomena.
Michael Scott-Joynt: Explanations are so much more complicated than observations, because there’s another element to put into that, which is the extent to which so many surveys suggest, and a lot of experience suggests that a lot of people who see themselves as religious, or to be pursuing a spirituality appear unconvinced that churches of whatever sort, are the place to do that in. There’s this strong streak there too of individualism, rather than a sense that this is something that you do together. And so the notion which appears in many public writing of institutional religion as a kind of critical statement or a bad thing as if for any historic faith there could be anything that wasn’t in some sense institutional because it’s necessarily corporate to a very significant extent. So I think that is complicated. I think too that it will be interesting to see how the next years run particularly. There’s something rather tragic – leave aside, whether it is possible to have a war against terrorism - but I suspect that if we were a Martian, supposing such people existed, looking down on us, we’d see would-be secular northern Europe as a very small blip on the planet. I mean it’s still a very largely religious planet. Humankind is largely religious. I’m trying to say to the secularists what a curious kind of blip in history this is, and are they really sure that the blip’s going to continue. And I think we need to be making that point within the churches. There remains everything to play for and we’re bound to engage much more energetically, which is why this commission and anything like it is important. Because I think there’s a lot of sitting down under ‘well we can’t change this…’ I sense in our churches many of them – certainly in many of the Church of England churches – which has to be kind of galvanised in particular ways.
Martyn Eden: Can I pick up another comment which also fascinated me which was the one from your conversation with Richard Chartres. In what sense do you or he perceive that Britain is one of the least established – the Church of England is one of the least established churches in Europe.
Michael Scott-Joynt: The most obvious levels would be financially and in relation to buildings.
Martyn Eden: No state tax for the Church.
Michael Scott-Joynt: Yes and clergy are not state employees. We have, saving the presence of a member of the House of Commons, though not from the governing party, I think. We have an extraordinarily unjust regime in terms of – for all the churches and faiths – in terms of VAT on buildings, which is partly a European question, but also a British government question. And there’s no sense short of the Ecclesiastical Committee of state control of the Church of England. Nor do I myself believe that there’s really any significant evidence in recent years that Church of England bishops or clergy or lay leaders are constrained by the range of Church/State links that exist, from saying what they judge they should say whether in Parliament or anywhere else. So I think it’s in those kinds of ways that the position is very different from a number of continental countries. In some sense, every church that isn’t entirely pietistic, has necessarily relations with the state. Legally every church has property in relation to the state. So there’s shades in all this, which is what I want to say, though I don’t deny the particular opportunities and responsibilities, privileges and burdens that the Church of England has inherited and still has.
Martyn Eden: Can I ask one last question, and I ask this with genuine respect. There are a small number of bishops who make wonderful use of their seat in the House of Lords, but most of your colleagues don’t. If they all did – if the Church of England was a really powerful voice in the House of Lords - would you envisage a rather different situation for good or ill.
Michael Scott-Joynt: First of all, I don’t know whether you’ve actually looked at – although you probably have, being an efficient organisation – the kind of record of engagement. There are I think a small minority of us who do little or nothing. There are others who do a lot and there’s quite a block of us in the middle who pursue particular issues. It would be interesting to know whether if we managed to clear our diaries – either if we managed to clear our diaries to do much more – whether that would be perceived as a useful contribution or whether the rest of house would get edgy, I don’t know. And the other alternative, which is among those scouted I think by the Wakeham Review and others is – if there was a more efficient Church of England and other Christian groups and other faith participation – much more working peers than we are, that would clearly be another thing again, because of the particular set of contacts that bishops have and the bishops bring with them, which would be different from, in most cases a lay person or a cleric, appointed there because that was to be their ministry and each of us comes as part of a whole range of other engagements.
Derek Tidball: I supervised a successful PhD on the role of bishops in the House of Lords during the Thatcher era recently, you’ll be pleased to hear. And made me detailed statistical analysis as to what contribution had been made over what range of issues, but made me much more sympathetic to the apparent absence of bishops speaking in the Lords because of some of the procedural difficulties you have and some of the constraints the Lords rules of operating impose which make it difficult for you to participate. But that’s a footnote.
David Muir: Bishop, I was particularly struck by your observations that Christians should almost expect to be marginalised in public discourse. I wonder how you think or what Christians can or should do to avoid that marginalisation in public discourse.
Michael Scott-Joynt: Well I think clearly there’s been a reaction to the centuries in which the Christian voice for good or ill, well or badly expressed was powerful in this country. Whether it actually was and whether the state was actually listening to what the churches were saying and whether the churches were saying what they ought to be saying is another question. But it wasn’t long ago that there was, whether it was the nonconformist conscience or the Church of England or some elements of increasing Roman Catholic coming out of the ghetto – there have been points when the churches were more clearly powerful and influential, so I’m sure there’s been a reaction to that and that reaction I take has been exacerbated by the various human rights traditions and so on. We’re still, I guess, much more influential right across the range of the Churches. We have a significant number of professing Christians in the House of Commons and House of Lords. We have a range of others, some placed in broadcasting. And if I compare with some of my opposite numbers in Malawi or Rwanda or the Congo or Uganda, we’ve got some places of input, and those are some of my comparisons. But my point, I think is that we are going to have to freshly to see how the points of access can be developed. We’re going to have to take them with more skill, with more acuteness, with more networking, which is again why some of the things EA has been doing in recent years are of real interest to the rest of us. And then I think there’s the fact that we are not prepared, at least I think the Church of England is not prepared for the kinds of pressures and marginalisations and dismissals and opposition that in many other parts of the world people are born to as Christians. My sense is, and maybe this is because of my dealings with Christians across Africa and in Eastern Germany and in Burma, where they look at this country and see us under enormous pressure as Christians from secularisation and carelessness about things of faith and say that we’ve got to get up and at it. So I don’t want to suggest that I’m happy about the…the change I think in a sense is right – it means that we have to work in a quite fresh way, would be my feeling
David Muir: And your views about the nationality and asylum act, especially with respect to citizenship, one of the conditions about becoming a citizen is that one has got to have sufficient knowledge of life in the United Kingdom. What would you see as being some of the key values and institutions that should inform that knowledge?
Michael Scott-Joynt: I think I would hope that, and this goes even as far as questions of constantly lowering the proportions of people who vote – I would want people especially to be realising that they could grow to participate in and contribute to this society in a context in which I think we need constant stimulus, rejuvenation, as we’ve had over centuries from the energies of those who have come here and one of the questions therefore I’d want is for citizenship to be strongly inclusive. I would want to offer people the kinds of education which would allow them as quickly as possible into work and into a range of other kinds of participation. I’m not talking about integration because it seems to me to be of the greatest importance that people should be free to remain part of whatever sub community, which will actually be the real community because speaking about the community of the British people is a pretty unreal thing. So I want people to continue to be part of whatever community they judge they were part of, but to be equipped sufficiently to be able to help that community participate more widely or themselves do so. But I was unhappy with the way that that seemed to be drawn in restrictive and rather grudging terms, rather than terms that as people come to this country there is a need for people to be equipped to work and to participate in other ways. And of that, I do think that the linguistic questions are most important. I’ve small experience of it, but the position of Serbian women in the part of north Oxfordshire where I used to work 25 years ago, where it happened that there were sizeable royalist Serbian communities because there had been a big base of a prisoner of war camp, after the war, and I found exactly the same with many Muslim women in Stoke on Trent, that they were substantially imprisoned because of their lack of English and the pressures on marriages, the pressures on their children – children leaving home asking can I leave home because I’m my mother’s interpreter, Those kind of things I think are extremely important. Otherwise I’d want to be highly inclusive. And I’d want to be inclusive too because I do think that Christians’ participation in this society will paradoxically be strengthened by partner relationships with other faiths and their taking more responsibility, rather than weakened by it. This requires alertness and preparedness to engage and understand properly inter-faith relations questions at the level of faith. But I view that as positive for Christians, quite apart from positive for society. Clearly that might be different if I thought there was any serious possibility of our being overtaken, but I don’t believe that there is, speaking honestly.
Steve Webb: I wanted to move to a different subject. Take you back to the interesting thing you said earlier on – we’ve never as the churches mobilised our people electorally. And we’ve had the Church of Scotland represented earlier this afternoon who were quite active on things like the Scottish Parliament and various social justice issues, land reform and so on. And I wonder, is it that the Church of England can’t, actually - that there wouldn’t be a Church of England position. For instance – civil partnerships – the whole kind of homosexuality issue. The church is having enough trouble with its own issues to do with homosexuality - the idea that the Church of England would decide on a position and mobilise its people to back it, I can’t conceive of. If I’m right that it couldn’t, is that because it’s an established church that has to be everywhere and therefore has to be as inclusive as possible, and by definition isn’t going to come down a single line on a single issue. And does that therefore has to fall to Christian lobby organisations, groups of Christians who think the same thing about an issue, issue by issue? Is it something that the established church here could never do, or could it?
Michael Scott-Joynt: It will be very interesting to see where we are in 30 or 40 years time when we won’t be here to look at it. I think that’s a very fair question. It could be done, I suspect, more locally, regionally than nationally. We are, of course, also the Church of England, a church which now contains a very interesting mix of monochrome and non monochrome churches and congregations. The whole question of people’s mobility puts under pressure the parochial systems as understood and the development of the range of kind of theme churches, the whole range of the emerging church understandings means that there’s much more self-selection, rather than the range of people who live in an area which was the way that I was brought up, and people’s mobility adds to that. It’s true that on most of the kind of gender issues, yes the Church of England is quite significantly divided. Whether it will stay that way… what kinds of shakings out are going to happen over the next 10, 15, 20 years – what kind of realignment of the archbishops is going to take place, much remains to be seen. And I don’t even know what’s going to work out in the next five or ten years. The same would I suppose be true in terms of what will happen ecumenically - where people will ally themselves and which of major churches will stay roughly as it is and which may divide two or three ways – I don’t think we know those kinds of things at the moment. But I suppose that you’re right that it would be difficult for the Church of England at the minute to campaign around a particular position, and we’ve judged that we shouldn’t do that, just as the Roman Catholics in this country and most other churches. But what we’ve not done I think is to win the argument. I was out with a group of parishes on Sunday night a few weeks ago on a kind of responding to the hoary questions about Christian faith and politics. And we’ve still got, I suppose the papers wouldn’t say it if there weren’t a lot of people who believe that Christian faith was basically a private matter. Well that’s an extraordinary notion to Christians. But it is what most journalists appear to think that most people think. Because that’s the question they most often put to us – why are you expressing a view on this at all? If we could only get our people seriously engaged, with whatever result. We can argue together about the positions people take, but if we only got it understood that if you’re a Christian you’re concerned with the lordship of Christ over society, whether that’s at the level of world and planet and environment, or particular countries, and so necessarily you’re interested in matters political, that would be a huge achievement on the churches’ behalf, if all our people were engaged, even at the kind of level in which a lot of people engaged in the Premiership. Most Christians are not that interested in politics, whether local or national, but it seems to be just straight out of our title deeds, that we have to be. But we’ve not got that across.
Don Horrocks: Bishop, I hope this isn’t too hard a question, or a googlie, or anything like that. But it’s a question relating to on the one hand your comments about secular public doctrine, which excludes God almost in religious kind of a way, and the Evangelical Alliance’s stated aim to unite Christians to change society, against that background. I remember about a year ago hearing you (I was there in person) on a panel talking about Church/State relations, and I stood up to ask a question – I don’t know if you remember, you probably thought "there he is again". I was asked to identify myself before speaking and I said I was from the Evangelical Alliance. It was probably a question that none of the panel really wanted to answer, I can’t even remember what it was now, but a certain individual who is the editor of the Observer, was called upon to respond and his entire reply consisted of – he never touched the question itself – an extended response to why the word ‘evangelical’ caused him problems. Now, bearing in mind that I got no hearing on that occasion, because of the word ‘evangelical’, and I suppose we could also remember Tony Blair’s unwillingness to answer questions about his prayer life – Tony Blair "doesn’t do God", we’re told. Against that background of excluding any kind of Christian spirituality in the public sphere, we have the interesting contrast today, that Cosmopolitan magazine has appointed a Spiritual Editor and there’s going to be a regular monthly piece on spirituality, alongside the advice on sex tips and relationships. We’re talking now about designer spirituality and religion coming out as a gimmick. My question is this: against that background, what opportunities are there for Christian distinctives in this rather strange market place in which we find ourselves. A crying need in people and yet a public shutdown on faith.
Michael Scott-Joynt: That’s a set of questions which we really have to address at every possible level, because that’s a set of questions which I guess meets people in canteens up and down the country eating their sandwiches in the office or the workplace or wherever, just constantly. I mean, a spirituality advisor the intriguing thing would be to see the job description they advertised and whether there was any expectation, either of any training or of any rooting in any particular faith. And I doubt if there was and I suspect that means if you look at the shelf in WH Smith’s which say Spirituality and you find everything – you find some of Evangelical Alliance’s good books and some others, plus things about Aromatherapy and you name it – it is a kind of pick and mix affair. The question of evangelical is particularly complicated, and I was you know run across this very particularly this summer because when nine of us judged it right to say something in June, actually six of those nine were Evangelicals and three were not. But as far as the Press is concerned it’s evangelicals, I guess because evangelicals are a bit like fundamentals, and fundamentalists look a bit like Muslims and so someone can describe it as the Taliban factor. And what is at stake at the moment as I judge it, in a significant proportion, and I’m tempted to say that it goes with the denigration of marriage, which I think it does, is the sense that seriousness about religion is a danger to society. And evangelical is clearly a word that means seriousness about religion – what that probably means is that all the rest of us had better start using it of ourselves too. But that’s the difficulty you had with the word – and I had a conversation with the gentleman later that evening, which sort of unwrapped some of that, which I suppose I had better not describe as I suppose it was a private conversation. But I did take up some of those questions later and discovered some of the reasons why he thought that. And the Blair interview which I mentioned, I’m sure is part of same thing – the refusal to answer Paxman’s question. There are people around the Prime Minister who say that this doesn’t run well, this is seriousness about religion and doesn’t go down well with the electorate. I think again we need to be much bolder about this if we can be. But your question - how do we find opportunities – and then how do we train and educate each other and our people. And much of it has to be whether the Christians people meet are attractive and telling, notwithstanding what I hope would be our clarity, both of belief and behaviour. It’s only that way that the thing will wither on the vine at the level of the newspapers it seems to me. If local churches and the Christians people discover to be Christians in the workplace, or down the bowls club or wherever, are telling attractive people without being wishy-washy. So there is a huge formation question for many of us in our churches.
Don Horrocks: Does that extend to Christians having much more engagement on a more professional basis with media?
Michael Scott-Joynt: I’d hope that Christians given opportunity – and Ram was describing one of his recently – that given those opportunities we would speak clearly. But we’ve got to win our way in, because linguistically, like the word evangelical, there are these words which have become kind of switch offs – and as I said earlier there is this notion around that unfaith is a norm, and faith is not. And that unfaith is a value-free position. Dawkins is not a person of faith and you and I are - he’s neutral and you and I are odd! Now, we have got to do business with this kind of position and find ways of doing so, but very complex it is to find the opportunity, particularly when there’s a minute and a half and you’re there to talk about something else.
David Hilborn: Bishop, I wonder about whether one has to operate on two fronts here. You’ve talked eloquently about the need for constructive engagement using the instruments of establishment where appropriate so that church can contribute to wider society. But at the same time we’ve also heard a number of incidences of prejudice against Christians, not least evangelicals. I was on the tube the other day and I noticed a new poster, which said come and learn more about your human rights. I thought that’s a rather bland motherhood and apple pie-ish sentiment and then there was a quote from L. Ron Hubbard and it was published by the Church of Scientology – this is the route they are going down to attract more people. Learn more about your human rights. And of course, my cynicism kicked in because we know Scientologists have been legislated against in Germany and elsewhere and they are very litigious in defending their religious liberties and promulgating their own interests through that. But it does seem, without getting into that sort of paranoia, we are probably going to have to protect ourselves through the rights agenda, claiming our religious liberties and so forth, more and more in the next ten, twenty years or so. And there’s been talk in recent years about legislation on incitement to religious hatred, which has been kind of played down by most mainstream churches because it creates this victim culture, and we are all accusing one other of offence and there’s a breakdown of consensus there. Would you agree that in a sense you have to do both/and rather than either/or? Don Horrocks operates for us on areas like civil partnership and so forth where it is necessary to build in protections in law against prejudicial policies and legislation against evangelical interests, as well as somehow trying to minister the love and grace of Christ.
Michael Scott-Joynt: That last point is among the real binds in which we are. Because we’re struggling to say, at a range of points, it comes constantly either to those who actually wear a bracelet – What would Jesus do, or say - or those of us who seek to ask that question seriously, whether we wear a bracelet or not. Now some of those who answer that question want to say well it’s a matter simply of inclusive, accessible love. Others of us who try to struggle to understand our Lord in the Scriptures, recognise that there’s both the astonishing degree of inclusive, accessible love and extraordinary demands because the gift of a particular way of life is an element of that love. Now in a world that thinks that Christians are only nice Christians if we’re being nice and that being restrictive of what people see as their freedoms - that’s the kind of complexity – Don and I have been running this course together endlessly on the same side of the argument and we’re going to spend a good deal of the winter there too. So that is very complicated. We’re in the phase too it seems to me more and more – and I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not an expert in human rights legislation – but sitting there spending a good few hours fifteen feet opposite the Lib-Dems and doing the work before and after persuades me that the human rights legislation is fundamentally individualistic and something like marriage, leave aside faith, is not included, has no rights, is not defensible within it, is an institution, like the other institutions that the thing is in some sense designed in the years after the war to defend people against. So there’s real difficulty as you know. The Evangelical Alliance produced that submission to the civil partnerships consultation, and as Don pointed out to me, and I’ve now read the government’s description of the responses, it appears nowhere. And the kinds of things we say, even if we try to say them in non religious language, don’t fit the boxes in which the discussion is going on, and yet we have to try to say them. So yes I think that we have got to participate strongly in the political argument, but we may have to be prepared for some very difficult times. The whole employment legislation that is going through, for instance, there are going to be Christian leaders of all the churches who are going to run foul of the law. And that’s going to be very difficult and very expensive. And our legal advisors are already very anxious about it. And it will be much more acceptable for that to be Christians in these difficulties than Muslims in the present culture. That’s another of our puzzles, but maybe that’s where we’ve got to accept it – I mean some of our sisters and brothers abroad would say that’s what you’ve got to expect and that’s what it is to be Christian and why do you think it’s so surprising, and that’s what I meant by saying we’re not... I mean I can’t conceive that I’d have said that 15 years ago – some of you might, but I don’t think I was educated that way.
Derek Tidball: It’s the changing context, isn’t it.
Ram Gidoomal: Just wanted to make a point that I made in the previous session. I was very challenged by Sandy Millar’s words at Holy Trinity Brompton when he said that as he was growing up he assumed everything from Westminster was Christian and that everything that came from therein would be within the bounds of the book – and he picks up the Bible and makes a very graphic point. And he says no longer is that assumption true. No longer can we live in a context of deluding ourselves that that is true. Now’s the time for Christians to engage in the political arena, so he really was in fact using that to reinforce Christians to get engaged.
Michael Scott-Joynt: I’m sure that’s right and I noted that... wise as serpents and innocent as doves and the context of that is telling for us. The engagement that’s required of us unless we’re just going to sit down and let the juggernaught, which I believe is extremely damaging... if we, which we have every prospect of doing, if we lose the fundamental character of marriage for British society, it’s a sign of the scale of the difficulties we face, that most of the governing party would not recognise that that was a question at stake this winter. But the thing is of such seriousness. And most of our people have to grasp that and maybe Don and this organisation are right in saying we should have done a lot more organising two years ago. Some of us didn’t jump in with you quick enough we may be saying in a month or two’s time.
Don Horrocks: Jumping back to your previous answer, I’m intrigued to know what kind of debate went on at Episcopal level regarding the Bishop of Chester and whether there was rejoicing at the prospect or despair.
Derek Tidball: The prospect of the bishop being arrested.
Michael Scott-Joynt: I don’t think there’d be any rejoicing at the prospect of the bishop being arrested. I think it would be foolish to look for that. You might say that it would be a good opportunity for witness, but I think that would be a difficult position. I doubt if there was any of that. I’ve no doubt that there were bishops who did not, as I did, send him a supportive email. I oughtn't to reveal more.
Derek Tidball: I meant to write to the Times the day it was produced and then just missed the opportunity. It was an extraordinary irony to hear the Chief Constable rebuking him for not buying into diversity. Apparently the Chief Constable believes in diversity insofar as it agrees with him. But anybody who makes a statement which is diverse…
Michael Scott-Joynt: One person’s conversation is another man’s plotting.
David Hilborn: One theological point, if I may. Quite neutral literature, with no evangelical axe to grind will regularly cite seven or eight studies by psychological associations or reputable psychiatric bodies on re-orientation, and the extraordinary thing about the LGCM opposition and the police taking an interest in it, was that they were prepared to accept that that was irrelevant. Peter Forster was simply saying that there are some people who might re-orient voluntarily and they are successful in doing so in some cases, depending on the study it could be between 20% and anything up to 40% or 50%. It would only take one successful re-orientation to dismantle the whole case which is that he was witnessing to something that was not true – that was the basis to their argument.
Michael Scott-Joynt: That’s what’s so telling. That is where the murky ground of public certainty is. Now there’s some very serious questions for some of you to work out as to how we’ve got into that position in thirty years.
David Hilborn: It is positively Nietzchen, in that power was the key thing and not truth.
Michael Scott-Joynt: There is some very interesting research – in the churches too – I’m asking myself constantly how we got into this position. There’s a very interesting paragraph in the Chadwick biography of Michael Ramsay who I think absolutely correctly was in favour of the Wolfenden reforms, but when asked about same-sex relationships from a Christian standpoint was as crystal clear as you would expect him to be and that was thirty years ago – I think it was a 1971 discussion. It was a very interesting paragraph in the Chadwick biography which quotes him and I’m asking myself constantly – there’s a very interesting study to trace that change in the churches as well as in society.
Derek Tidball: Well regretfully we must draw a line there. We’re very grateful to you – thank you very much for your time this afternoon, for the co-operation you and Don are having and assurance of our prayers for you in the role you have as a bishop and that role that you have in House of Lords. Each of our witnesses has been very different today, but the thing I think I will take away from this discussion is the overseas church voice saying why should you expect it to be any different, that you’ve alluded to several times and maybe we’ve just had it too easy for too long in the country and we’ll now join in the experience of the world church.
Michael Scott-Joynt: Well, I believe that to be the case – I don’t relish it, but I believe it to be the case.
Derek Tidball: Thank you very much indeed.
